His Secret Starlight Baby
Autor
Michelle Major
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18
HarlequinChapter One
Cory Hall approached the man who’d just exited the darkened bar, trying not to be intimidated by his size and strength. He was well over six feet tall with an athlete’s build, the body of a former NFL star.
In the dim glow of the streetlamp overhead, it was hard to make out his features, although she knew his dark hair was shot through with streaks of burnished gold, the kind of natural highlights that pro-athlete wives and girlfriends spent gobs of money to re-create in the salon. Cory could see that his angular jaw was muted by several days of stubble, and the canvas jacket he wore strained to envelop his massive shoulders.
He turned back toward the door without noticing her. At this point in her life, she was used to being invisible, so that wasn’t a surprise.
“We’re closed,” he said, his voice reverberating in the quiet of the hour. So he’d noticed her after all. He didn’t bother to turn from the door he was locking. Either Jordan Schaeffer didn’t expect trouble late at night in a small town like Starlight, Washington, or he wasn’t worried about handling himself.
It could be either option. Yet Cory was about to dump a whole heap of trouble into his life that might make him wish he’d taken more care.
She certainly would have made different choices if someone offered her a do-over on the past few years. More care with her heart and a sharper focus on what she wanted her life to look like. Instead, Cory had let the people around her dictate her choices and her self-worth, and they hadn’t given a single damn about her. Now she was ready to begin again at twenty-seven years old. There was only one thing that mattered—her baby—and she’d do whatever it took to be the mom he deserved.
After a quick glance over her shoulder at her grandmother’s old Buick, which was parked at the curb, Cory swallowed and took another step forward.
“Hey, Jordan.”
His hand stilled on the set of keys he held, and his broad back went stiff. For a moment Cory didn’t think that he recognized her voice. A spike of panic zinged across her middle at the thought he might not even remember her.
They hadn’t exactly parted as the best of friends.
A bitter wind whistled along the empty street, and she hugged her arms tight across her body. She’d left her big coat in the car when the anticipation of this meeting left her drenched in sweat. The late-March temperature was cool but not frigid, not like the biting cold of her hometown in Michigan. This part of Washington, an hour east of Seattle in a valley at the base of the Cascade Mountains, had appeared both temperate and picturesque when she’d driven in earlier this afternoon. In fact, it seemed perfect. A quaint, quiet place to start fresh.
Cory needed a fresh start like she needed her next breath.
Jordan went back to locking the door, and if it weren’t for that initial rigidity and the tension currently radiating from him, Cory might have thought he hadn’t heard her greeting.
When he turned, she realized what a fool she’d been—nothing new there. Jordan’s pale green eyes blazed with an emotion she couldn’t name, although it definitely wasn’t friendly. Not that she expected a warm welcome back into his life, although she had to admit, in the two and a half days it had taken to drive halfway across the country, her mind had wandered down the path of silly fantasy more than once.
She fisted her hands, the sharp pain of nails stabbing into the flesh of her palm a much-needed reminder to stay grounded in reality. Cory was in Starlight to take care of business, not to indulge in ridiculous daydreams. Single moms didn’t have time for that sort of nonsense.
“How are you?” she asked, clearing her throat when the words came out on a croak. She tried for a smile. “It’s been a minute.”
“What are you doing here?” He pocketed the set of keys and rocked back on his heels. His eyes raked over her in a way that left her wishing she hadn’t forgotten her flat iron back in Michigan. Or had she deserted that particular styling tool when she’d taken off from Atlanta? She hadn’t given much thought to making herself look pretty in what felt like ages.
“I was...um...in the area, and I thought I’d stop in and say hi.” She gave a limp wave. “Hi.”
Jordan stared at her like she’d lost her mind.
“I didn’t know if you’d remember me.” She pushed away a stray lock of hair that blew into her face. “I’m sure you want to—”
“I remember, Cory.” His voice was a deep, angry rumble. “I remember everything.”
She swallowed. “Oh. Okay, well, that’s good. I think.” She gestured to the bar he’d exited minutes earlier. “You own this place, right? It looks nice.” She inwardly cringed at her inability to stem the tide of inane babble pouring from her mouth. She wasn’t here for pleasantries but couldn’t quite bring herself to get to the point.
“It’s after midnight.” He ran a hand through his thick hair. She still couldn’t see its true color, but it was longer than he’d worn it when he’d played football in Georgia. Untamed and a bit wild, much like the man himself.
“Right.” She took a slow, steadying breath. “I need to talk to you, Jordan.”
“I got that.”
“It’s about what happened when you left.”
“From what I saw on ESPN, Kade got one hell of a contract offer. Forty million for four years. He got it all. You both got exactly what you wanted.”
She winced at the accusation in his voice, even though she deserved every bit of judgment and condemnation Jordan Schaeffer could dish out. “Kade and I aren’t together,” she said, as if that explained everything when it was only the tip of the iceberg.
“Not my concern, Cory. In fact, right now my only concern is getting home and into bed for a decent night’s sleep. I wish you well in whatever you choose for life after Kade Barrington, if you’re telling the truth about that.”
“I never lied,” she said, trying and mostly failing to keep the pain out of her voice. Trying and completely failing to stop an image of Jordan asleep in bed from filling her mind.
“You went back to him.”
Cory sucked in a shaky gulp of air, because she could have sworn she heard an answering pain in Jordan’s tone. That couldn’t be possible, because...
“After you took off.” She bit down on the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. “You left without even saying goodbye.”
He laughed, a harsh scrape across her fraught nerves. “Sweetheart, we barely said hello.”
Oh no. He wasn’t going to do that. Not now. Not after everything Cory had dealt with in the past year. She might have had only one night with Jordan, but it had meant...something. To her, it had turned out to mean everything.
Her gaze darted to the gas guzzler her grandmother had given her before she died last month, and Cory was tempted to walk away. She could climb back in the car, spend one night in the local inn where she’d rented a room and be on the highway by first light.
Then she looked at him again, at those unique eyes she saw staring back at her every day, and realized she had to see this through. If not for herself, then for her baby.
“We said plenty,” she told him, straightening her shoulders. “We did plenty. Enough that I have a six-month-old son in that car.” She hitched a finger at the Buick. “You have a son, Jordan.”
Jordan stared at the little boy gazing up at him from his mother’s arms for several long seconds, then resumed pacing back and forth across the scuffed hardwood of Trophy Room, the bar he owned.
His mind continued to race at a thousand miles an hour, and adrenaline pumped through him so hard he thought his head might actually explode. Jordan had grown up an athlete. He could handle adrenaline. On the football field, he’d loved the spike of heat through his veins. It meant he was ready for action. He was in control. It didn’t matter whom he was facing in the lineup or what the stakes were, from his chance at a college scholarship to a national championship to a televised playoff game.
He rose to meet every challenge and welcomed each new opponent, unwavering in his faith that determination and dedication would see him through.
Cory Hall had nearly felled him with four simple words.
You have a son.
Of course he remembered her. The thought that he could forget the sweet, beautiful woman who’d been the girlfriend of Jordan’s jerk-wad quarterback was preposterous. She was different from a lot of the other girlfriends and wives on the team. She didn’t seem to care much about the trappings of the lifestyle, only about keeping Kade happy, which turned out to be no easy task.
Jordan had played with Kade Barrington in Atlanta for two seasons and had been more than a little shocked that a woman like Cory could be so devoted. Kade had talent in spades, but he’d been released from the team that drafted him out of college due to his inability to get along with the coaches and other players.
He landed in Atlanta with an attitude and something to prove. He and Cory had rented a big house in an expensive neighborhood, and Kade had loved to throw huge team parties. Cory had never seemed all that comfortable in big groups, which was how she and Jordan had ended up talking late one night out by the pool.
Their talks had become a bright spot in his otherwise dark life. Then he’d been injured and hadn’t seen her for months. Until the night she showed up at his condo after breaking up with Kade. She’d asked to sleep on his sofa, and he still believed that was what they’d both intended.
It wasn’t what had actually occurred.
“I’ll arrange a paternity test if you want,” Cory offered, her voice quiet. She’d changed from how he remembered her in his mind. Her dark hair was shorter, just skimming her shoulders. Her slim build, rosy lips and the sprinkling of freckles across her nose remained the same. But there was something different about her deep brown eyes. They were guarded now and looked world-weary, as if she’d seen things and experienced feelings that changed her at a cellular level. Somehow it made her even more appealing.
He’d barely been able to speak after she dropped that bombshell on the sidewalk. A part of him, the shadowy fragment that never planned to become a father, had urged him to send her away.
Jordan had a good life in Starlight. He liked the town and the people living in it. He liked owning a local watering hole and had worked hard to elevate Trophy Room from a dumpy dive bar to a popular hangout for locals and visitors alike. His existence was simple and straightforward, and he worked hard to keep it that way.
Cory Hall was ten kinds of complicated. That was without a baby thrown into the mix.
Jordan didn’t want complications.
Instead of sending her away, he’d told her to bring the baby into the bar. He’d unlocked the door, flipped on the light and reentered the space he knew like the back of his hand.
With Cory following close on his heels, he saw the bar through her eyes. Through the lens of someone who’d known him when he was a big deal in the world, or at least had a monster-size attitude. He’d changed, and because of that, he couldn’t send her away without at least hearing her out.
Then the baby, who’d been sleeping soundly in the car-seat contraption Cory carried him in, had woken. She’d quickly made a bottle while Jordan stared out the bar’s front window into the peaceful night and said a fond farewell to the calm he’d known in life.
“He looks just like me,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Yeah.” Cory smiled down at the baby, who was beginning to drift off once again. “He has your eyes. I’ve never seen eyes that color on anyone else.”
“They’re my father’s eyes,” Jordan said, then clamped his mouth shut. He wasn’t going to bring his dad into this conversation. “Why didn’t you reach out to me right away, Cory? I can’t believe I’m just finding out about him.”
“I’m sorry.” Her delicate brows drew together. “I was reeling after you left Atlanta. I thought...” Heat crept into her cheeks, and she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”
“You went back to Kade.”
“Not right away. We gave it another try after I found out I was pregnant,” she admitted. “It seemed like the best thing for the baby. I had a few complications at the start of the pregnancy. When the doctor did the early ultrasound, I realized that, based on the date of conception, the baby wasn’t Kade’s.”
“And there was no one else other than me?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, and he could see how much the question hurt her. Damn it. Even now, he didn’t want to hurt her.
“Forget I asked that,” he said, lowering himself into a chair across from her. “I know this baby is mine. Did you tell Kade?”
Her mouth tightened. “I told him I’d been with someone else during our breakup. He wanted me to give him a name, but I wouldn’t.”
“And he just let you go?”
“That’s not exactly how I’d describe it. He kicked me out of the house with nothing but the clothes on my back. I stayed with a friend for a couple of days and managed to get one of the other guys’ girlfriends to help me retrieve some of my belongings. But most of what I had, he’d bought for me. The clothes, the car, the jewelry.”
“Did those things mean a lot to you?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty sure you know they didn’t. I never cared about that stuff.”
“I thought I knew you,” he said quietly, the ache in his chest expanding with every moment that passed. “But now I wonder. The woman I knew wouldn’t have kept a baby from me.”
“I get it.” She adjusted her hold on the child, cradling him more snugly against her. “With how you left, I was afraid you wouldn’t want anything to do with me, and it would have broken my heart. I’d planned to contact you after he was born, but with the surgery and follow-up visits, there was so much happening.”
“What surgery?” Jordan sat straighter in the heavy oak chair.
“Ben had a congenital heart defect. The doctors discovered it shortly after he was born,” she explained. “He had surgery when he was five days old.”
“What kind of defect?” Jordan demanded, then took in a calming breath when the baby startled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to shout.”
“It’s okay.” Cory gave him a hesitant smile. The smiles he remembered from her had been wide and beaming, like she was a character in that old TV show his grandma used to watch, turning the world on with her smile. “It was a narrowing of the aorta, and his lower extremities weren’t getting enough blood flow, so they had to do surgery to correct it. It was scary, but he came through like a champ. According to the pediatric cardiologist, he’s healthy now. And he’s perfect.” He watched as she drew in a shuddery breath and then added, “To me, he’s perfect.”
Jordan pressed two fingers to his chest in an attempt to rub away the deep ache that surfaced at the obvious love in her voice. Questions and accusations surged through him in angry waves. He had a child. His baby had been through something as significant as heart surgery, and he hadn’t been there. He’d had no idea. “You dealt with all that on your own?”
Cory shook her head. “I went back to Michigan and moved in with my grandma. Mom didn’t want much to do with me. She was too mad that I’d thrown away my ‘meal ticket.’” It was clear by the sharp air quotes she made what Cory thought of her mother’s opinion.
Jordan agreed. Despite his frustration, Jordan had to admit it said a lot about her character. He’d had his doubts about that part when he’d left Atlanta. Somehow the knowledge that he hadn’t been wrong about her priorities softened the sharp edge of anger he seemed to be skating at the moment.
“Gran was great, but...” Her gaze went dark. “She passed away last month.”
“I’m sorry,” he said automatically.
“I was happy to be with her at the end, and I’m grateful she got to meet her great-grandson. In fact, Gran was the one who made me promise I’d seek you out to tell you about Ben.”
“Thanks, Gran,” he said, glancing up at the ceiling.
“I don’t expect anything from you.” Cory gave a quiet laugh. “Lowering my expectations has become par for the course these days. If you want to be a part of his life—”
“Who do you think I am?” Jordan demanded, temper flaring again. “Hell, yes, I want to be a part of his life, Cory. He’s my son. I don’t know how we’re going to figure this out, but I can guaran-damn-tee you I’m not letting him go.”
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll find a way to make it work. Gran always said everything is figure-outable. I believe that.”
She spoke softly, her tone calm, like she was trying to gentle an angry bear. Jordan sighed when he realized he was the bear. Another benefit of his simple life was that it allowed him to stay in control of his emotions. When he didn’t feel much of anything, he couldn’t get himself into trouble.
Tonight a bomb had gone off, blowing apart the simple life he’d crafted in Starlight. Despite Cory’s vow to make it work, he had no doubt his moratorium on trouble had just been lifted.
